One in four UK private Wi-Fi networks unsecured
A British company claims almost one in four private wireless networks have no password protection. That’s despite 82 percent of users saying their network is protected.
CPP (a “life services” company that specializes in services such as identity fraud protections) sent an “ethical hacker” to drive around five cities scanning for wireless networks that could be picked up from the street. Of almost 40,000 networks detected, just under 25% had no protection.
The company also estimated that another 25% of networks had passwords or encryption so simple that they could have been cracked in under five seconds. (For ethical reasons, the researcher didn’t actually do this.) That appears to be because the networks used the weaker WEP encryption system, though five seconds still sounds a little quick. In a separate experiment, the company set up a bogus Wi-Fi network in a busy public place. More than 200 people joined the unsecured network in the space of an hour in an attempt to get online.
